"Pakistan appears to have more prisoners on death row...

"Pakistan appears to have more prisoners on death row than any other country in the world," noted a Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report. The commission is the only domestic rights body to have called for a review of capital punishment. But such a move is considered highly unlikely in a country where executive decisions are heavily influenced by the Islamic orthodoxy. Hardline religious leaders, who hold considerable sway over the government, oppose any reduction in executions. The death penalty is part of Islamic law and political observers agree that any government that does away with it would have to be prepared for a severe backlash. "Islam teaches justice (and) calls for an eye for an eye. All those forces who call for the abolition of death punishment are un-Islamic," says a spokesperson of the Islamic religious party, Jamiat Ulema Islam. "Since the country's constitution requires all laws in the country to be interpreted in the light of Islam, the question of scrapping the death penalty does not arise," says one rights commission member. "However, we can try to make pre-trial and court procedures foolproof so that only the real perpetrators of heinous crimes get capital punishment," he added. The HRCP criticism came after the 1997 execution of a man named Maqsood Ahmed who, it was later proved, had not committed the murder for which he was hanged. "Maqsood's was a typical case that established flaws in our system of justice, the country may have executed so many innocent Maqsoods. We have to get over our obsession to punish criminals with death. It has never proved to be a deterrent," said Malik Sarwar, a law student at a local college.